MAPHtastichttps://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph
Information, announcements, and hard-earned wisdom for students in the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities at the University of Chicago.Thu, 26 Feb 2015 18:01:42 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=421Stress Relief…. or Treat Yo Selfhttps://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/2015/02/26/stress-relief-or-treat-yo-self/
https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/2015/02/26/stress-relief-or-treat-yo-self/#commentsThu, 26 Feb 2015 18:01:42 +0000http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/?p=5259This is a very busy, stressful time of year. I remember Week 8 last year as a haze of frantic typing, coffee spills, and semi-permanent relocation to the Regenstein. I wish, however, that I had set aside more time to take care of myself. I would have had a better time during finals and also spring break.

Some of the office’s favorite stress reliefs:

Sarah recommends baths. For the right person, this is a relaxing activity, made even more relaxing with the right bath salts (here are Sarah’s favorite).

Go see a movie, for pleasure! Escape for a couple of hours with a fun movie. Last year, I relied on sitcoms for short bursts of happiness and relaxation (thank you, Party Down and Bob’s Burgers)

Sleep. I respond to stress and difficulty much like a bear. My answer is to just hibernate as much as possible and hope that everything is warm and better when I awake.

Come to the Maph office- this is a place for you to talk about Winter Quarter, finals, and how hard Maph can be. We get it, we’ve all been there too! Grab some tea and un-wind, even if it is just for a short time.

Pet Love is on March 5th! Therapy dogs come to campus and we get to love them.

]]>https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/2015/02/26/stress-relief-or-treat-yo-self/feed/0Winter Recipes (some healthier than others)https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/2015/02/15/winter-recipes-some-healthier-than-others/
https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/2015/02/15/winter-recipes-some-healthier-than-others/#commentsSun, 15 Feb 2015 22:20:28 +0000http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/?p=5184For me, at least, winter is a time of warm comfort food. And also root vegetables- they hold up well in winter. Winter Quarter is the hardest time to cook for ourselves, because we are so busy and it is just so cold outside. Below are some relatively easy recipes, to help.

Cooking is good for the budget and it just feels good to create something! This is a project you can start and finish all in one day, which can be a nice change of pace from papers and the more scholarly work.

Baked Potato Soup

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon canola oil

2 slices bacon, cut in half (you can easily leave this out, if you’d rather have a vegetarian soup)

Preparation:

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add bacon and cook, turning occasionally, until crisp, 4 to 5 minutes. Transfer to a paper towel to drain, leaving the oil and bacon drippings in the pan. Add onion to the pan and cook, stirring, until starting to soften, 2 to 3 minutes. Add potatoes and broth. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to maintain a simmer and cook until the potatoes are tender, 12 to 15 minutes.

Using a slotted spoon, transfer about half the potatoes to a bowl and mash until almost smooth, but still a little chunky. Return the mashed potatoes to the pan along with sour cream, 1/4 cup cheese and pepper. Cook, stirring, until the cheese is melted and the soup is heated through, 1 to 2 minutes.

Roasted Winter Squash and Apple Soup

Ingredients:

1 large winter squash (about 2 1/2 pounds), such as butternut or kabocha, peeled, seeded, and cut into 2-inch pieces

2 medium onions, peeled and quartered

3 cloves garlic, peeled

2 apples, such as Granny Smith, peeled, cored, and quartered

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Coarse salt

Chili powder, for seasoning (optional)

4 cups Vegetable broth

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large roasting pan, toss squash, onions, garlic, and apples with oil to coat. Season well with salt and chile powder. Roast, stirring every 10 minutes, until vegetables are fork-tender and lightly browned, about 40 minutes.

Transfer half the vegetables and 2 cups stock to a food processor; puree until smooth. Repeat with remaining vegetables and broth. Return pureed mixture to pot, thinning soup with stock, if necessary. Season with salt and chile powder; bring to a simmer over medium-low heat. Serve/Enjoy!

Bean Tortilla Casserole

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 cloves garlic, crushed with a press

2 cans (15.5 ounces each) black beans, rinsed and drained

Salt

2 cans (14.5 ounces each) diced tomatoes with green chiles

1/2 cup fresh cilantro leaves

10 corn tortillas

6 ounces shredded Monterey Jack cheese

1/2 cup reduced-fat sour cream

Preparation:

In a medium pot, heat oil and garlic over medium and cook until fragrant, 2 minutes. Add beans and 3/4 cup water and bring to a simmer until beans are very tender, about 5 minutes. Mash slightly and season with salt. Meanwhile, in a blender, puree diced tomatoes with cilantro.

Lay 4 tortillas in the bottom of an 8-inch square baking dish. Top with one-third of the tomatoes, half the bean mixture, and one-third of the cheese. Repeat, using 3 tortillas. Top with remaining 3 tortillas, remaining tomatoes, and cheese. Cover with foil and bake (or refrigerate up to 8 hours).

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Bake, covered, until cheese is melted, about 15 minutes; remove foil, reduce oven to 350 degrees, and bake until heated through and cheese is browned, 20 minutes. Serve with sour cream.

Lastly, when in doubt, just add quinoa to everything and play Too Many Cooks while in the kitchen.

Come winter in MAPH, most students find that they have much less structured time than they did in fall. Without Core twice a week and the set precept/social hour schedule on Fridays, the average MAPHer’s week looks very different from the fall.Winter inevitably means lots of unstructured time and lots to accomplish in ten weeks—which makes time management one of the biggest challenges this quarter.

For instance, I know a lot of you only have Tuesday/Thursday classes this quater—how do you make sure you’re structuring M/W/F (and the weekend) to stay on track and keep making progress with your thesis, course readings, and job hunts? Keep reading for some tips on managing your time and staying productive through the long winter months!

Make a schedule

This sounds pretty straightforward, but each day, write down a specific hour-by-hour schedule. You can do this on your phone, in a day planner, a sticky note—whatever’s most convenient for you. But the point is that it’s not just a to-do list. On the schedule, budget out exactly how much time you plan to spend on each activity. Specify how long you want to stay at the gym, how much time you want to take for lunch, how many hours you’ll put in at the Reg, and when you’ll go home at night.

With a basic to-do list, it’s very easy to leave items undone; when you plan out how much time you’ll spend on each activity, it makes you more accountable for getting through the list, which ultimately makes you more productive!

SCS’s Academic Skills Assessment Program also has some great resources to help you plan out your time and prioritize to-do’s. Check out their page for recommendations on how to organize your to-do’s and PDFs to help you plan your weekly and quarterly schedules!

How to build habits

Writing doesn’t have to be like that, Hercules.

One of the most important lessons I learned during my MAPH year is that good habits trump willpower. Sure, you could devote a week of Herculean effort and long nights at the library to writing your final papers—but it’s ultimately much more effective to make a habit of writing on a daily basis. The best way to build habits is to create conditions that make it easier to do the thing you’re trying to make habitual.

For instance, last winter I rented a locker at the Reg (such a good investment!) and moved all of my thesis books there. This meant that I couldn’t write at home, at a café, or in the MAPH Lounge—I had to go to same spot in the library everyday. Having the locker forced me to go there, and eventually the daily writing became a ritual of sorts: get out of class, grab a Peachy Green Rooibos from Ex Libris, and buckle down by locker on third floor to write for an hour or two.

It doesn’t have to be a library locker, but however you can create conditions that help make habits of structured writing/reading will be enormously useful. Developing consistent work habits will help you structure your time (especially on days when you have less class) and can help you chip away at thesis work and papers so that the end of the quarter is less of a time crunch.

Stick to a sleep schedule

Speaking of habits, one of the best ones you can develop this quarter is a consistent sleep schedule. The surest way you can mess up your grand time-management plans is to pull an all-nighter, sleep in the next day, miss the time you had budgeted to work, and then stay up the next night to catch up.

As I wrote in my sleep post last quarter, a consistent schedule is essential to time management, and also leads to better sleep! It’s tough when you’re juggling so many deadlines, but making a point of putting the books down at the same time each night will help you stick to the work schedules you’ve planned out.

Using the Pomodoro technique

Suppose you block out three hours at the Reg in the afternoon to do thesis writing. We’ve all had the experience of getting lost in the backwaters of Youtube for lengthy stretches of time, so how do you keep yourself on task?

Last year, I became a huge fan of the Pomodoro technique—the basic idea is that you divvy up your time into 30-minute segments, each one consisting of 25 minutes of focused work, followed by a 5 minute break. You can adapt this method however you like (I’m a fan of 50 minutes on, followed by a 10 minute break), but the important steps are: 1) set a timer for a specific period of time and 2) bear down and focus as much as possible while you’re on the clock. Afterwards, you can reward yourself with a walk around, a snack and fresh cup of coffee, or a short excursion on TheFacebook.com.

As for the timer, you can use your phone or this weird Pomodoro tomato timer, but I’m an enormous advocate of Self Control, an app that disables the internet on your computer for a set amount of time. Put half an hour on the clock, and try to pound out a page of writing in that time—Self Control will make sure email distractions don’t get in the way!

Self Control, doing what it does best.

Consistency trumps all

If you haven’t noticed, the basic theme of this post is that consistency and habit are the best ways to help manage your time. Make a daily schedule. Make a habit of writing each day. Get to sleep at the same time each night.

Doing all this will make you feel more balanced through this quarter, and it will ultimately make you so much more productive. Now go forth and manage the heck out of all that time you have for the next ten weeks!

Who do I want to be my advisor? How do I ask him or her? What is my thesis object (some of you may not know yet- hang in there!)?

What will I eat on Fridays, now that social hour is only once every few weeks?

I have so many questions!

How can I do reading for class as well as for my thesis? There are only 24 hours in a day, and I need 8 of them for sleeping!

And then there is the question on so many of our minds- What will the last season of Parks & Recreation be like? What happened in that three-year time jump? So many questions!

First of all, it is good to have a lot of questions. This means you are challenging yourself and getting into new territory, whether it is in your course selection, thesis topics, or advisors. Even if you feel unsettled or confused, that is a productive feeling. The thesis process looks and feels different for everyone, but I think these questions and anxieties are pretty universal.

As for approaching potential thesis advisors:

My first piece of advice here is to consult with your preceptor. They likely know or know of the professor you hope to meet with and can help advise you how to best approach him or her

To quote Scar, “be prepared.” When you set up/attend a meeting, make sure that your proposal in good shape (again, trust your preceptor). Make sure that you’ve looked up this professor, too, so you can articulate how your project connects to the professor’s interests/research. This not only shows the professor that you’ve done your homework, but it can give you some common ground during the meeting.

My third piece of advice is to meet with multiple people. I met with three faculty members about my thesis last January, and got completely different reading suggestions from each one. It was a great way to get ideas and perspective. At some point, you’ll start to parse all of this down. But in January and even February, it helps to just read everything you can.

Meetings are the best time in which to ask a professor to be your advisor. Avoid asking faculty through email. Instead, use email to set up a meeting and then, if it feels right, ask them face to face to go to prom advise your project.

Write down questions. For myself, I find it easy to go off track or to be flummoxed in a professor’s office. Confronted with the person and the amazing amounts of book in their office, I found (and still find) it very helpful to have a list of questions. Likewise, having your annotated bibliography and or proposal can be a good anchor.

My final piece of advice- chose an advisor you’ll want to work with the next 5 months. How much do you want to meet with this person? How accessible are they? These are all practical concerns worth thinking through!

The king of great advice

]]>https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/2015/01/13/advocating-for-some-advice-on-advisors/feed/0Welcome Back, MAPH!https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/2015/01/05/welcome-back-maph/
https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/2015/01/05/welcome-back-maph/#commentsMon, 05 Jan 2015 17:17:43 +0000http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/?p=5197Whether you stayed here for the break, visited family, or hibernated in a cave in the Alaskan wilderness for three weeks, we are glad to have you back and hope the quarter gets off to a great (albeit cold) start!

Here is Some Mentorly Advice to Get You Going:

Winter Quarter is the time to really take advantage of UChicago’s shopping culture. Go to different classes, take a look at the syllabus, and think through what the quarter will look like. What is your reading load? How many final papers will you face in ten weeks? (Remember that PhD students can take 1 or 2 seminars, but MAPHers are taking three courses and working on a thesis- we have a different workload.)

Make time for sleep!

Think through not what will look best on your transcript, but what do you want to spend the next ten weeks intensively studying? How can you balance your workload between more reading versus writing heavy classes?

Take Care of Yourself (Part I)

This takes many shapes, for instance physically keeping yourself warm and healthy. In December, I wrote a blog post with some Winter Tips. Make sure you are warm enough and staying healthy this winter. I found it extremely difficult to make myself cook and eat healthy last winter, because I felt tired and overwhelmed by work. Plus, it would be dark when I got home at 4:30 and all I’d want to do is put on sweatpants, eat some chips, and go to sleep. Resist that urge!

Visit Open Produce, one of my favorite places in Hyde Park, for some good fruit and veg.

Schedule time to cook and make large batches of soup (or whatever food you want)

Get some Vitamin C!

Take Care of Yourself (Part II)

Winter is also a time to take care of yourself mentally as well as physically. Remember that MAPH is a marathon, so pace yourself. Use the good habits you hopefully formed last quarter- or work to improve those habits for this quarter so that they are more sustainable and like Nicolas Cage-esque.

Remember, too, that there are people and tools for you! Although UChicago may not seem (or be) super warm and fuzzy, there are resources here for you.

-The warmest and, depending on what sweaters we wear, the fuzziest of resources are right here in the office. You can always come by and talk to us about the quarter, classes, thesis stuff- whatever it is. We’ve been there and are a safe space for you to talk/vent/rant/gesture wildly. This quarter, Mentor Office Hours will be every Thursday from 11-1 pm.

-Student Counseling Services offers a “Let’s Talk” Program, in which students can talk to someone without setting up an appointment.

-The Health and Wellness Center offers a lot of events, which you can find here. Included is meditation, yoga, and Meditation and Yoga/Wellness Center. Whatever you can do to relax and take needed breaks from work, go for it! Another great break is Tea and Pipes, which occurs every Tuesday. At Rockefeller Chapel, tea and biscuits are served at 4 pm, followed by half an hour of organ playing!

Get out of Hyde Park!

This is hardest in the cold and busy winter months. I was pretty terrible about this last year, though I fortunately had a friend who would entice me out of Hyde Park with warm, happy coffee shops every once in a while.

Not only is it nice to get away from the looming presence of the Regenstein, but it is good to remember that there is life and worlds outside of academia.

Furthermore, this is a chance to experience and take advantage of the incredibly cool city in which we live. Whether you are visiting a bar, working in a coffee shop, or escaping to the Botanical Garden Greenhouses- get there and enjoy new parts of Chicago!

Also, don’t forget to come to our event on Wednesday at 10:00 am, when Matt and I will provide coffee, bagels, and some insight into what it is like to be a Mapher writing a thesis winter and sprint quarter. I know weather will be gross, but don’t let the cold discourage you!

]]>https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/2015/01/05/welcome-back-maph/feed/0Writing Q & A with Jeff McMahonhttps://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/2014/12/05/writing-q-a-with-jeff-mcmahon/
https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/2014/12/05/writing-q-a-with-jeff-mcmahon/#commentsFri, 05 Dec 2014 16:01:54 +0000http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/?p=5171Below is a Q & A with our very own Writing Advisor, Jeff McMahon. Read below for advice on writing, particularly the final papers everyone is facing right now. Both Matt and I met with Jeff last year and benefited from his advice and the opportunity to talk through our own writing blockage.

Exactly a year ago, I went into Jeff’s office for help with a 20 page paper on 3 different objects and left about 30 minutes later, tired but optimistic, with 1 cohesive argument. Remember, too, that you can meet with Jeff to discuss papers, the thesis, and principles of argument throughout the year.

So, I hope you’ll take advantage of the great advice below and also remember what an incredible (and funny) resource Jeff is.

What was your MAPH thesis on?

The origins of the textual Chicago in Nelson Algren’s book-length essay, “Chicago: City on the Make.” My thesis excavated Algren’s sources for his depiction of Chicago, such as Carl Sandberg’s famous “Chicago” poem, and potent depictions of other cities, like an obscure poem about New York, which he used to create a textual Chicago that would resonate with readers as a Chicago they recognize.

How has your writing changed since Maph? Or, how do you think about writing differently?

I’m much more conscious of technique in revision, thanks to the brilliant work of Joseph Williams, Larry McEnerney, and the other staff of the University Writing Program. I was a writer before MAPH, but I revised more intuitively, having absorbed some technique from reading good writers, or having learned through trial and error. Now I know what textual structures succeed with readers and I know why.

What kind of courses do you teach?

Journalism courses! I’ve taught news writing, arts reviewing, and the creative writing non-fiction workshop. I’m thinking of proposing new courses on environmental science journalism and knowledge journalism. What do you think about those?

Of course, in addition to teaching you are also the MAPH Writing Advisor. How do you define or conceive of this role?

My primary job is to help writers adapt their writing to the very particular and often invisible demands of graduate school. But perhaps more importantly, I try to support writers through this transition.

How can students sign up to meet with you?

During the Core Course it gets so crazy I have that online signup sheet, but now you can just email me for an appointment: jmcmahon@uchicago.edu

We’d love to get your advice on final papers. Often, the hardest part of writing a paper is sitting down to begin and confronting the blank page. What do you think is a good first step? For instance, starting with a claim, by constructing a problem? Or by close reading?

I think starting with a tentative main claim is usually a good first step for argumentative papers. Then you can build a problem around that claim, and you can outline a paper defending it.

But there are no universal solutions in writing first drafts. Sometimes the best thing to do is start in the middle, if that’s where your energy wants to go. That’s probably going to be a messy way to start, requiring more revision, but sometimes it makes more sense than trying to start at a beginning that refuses to take form.

I often start accidentally by outlining. Partway through the outline I find myself writing full prose.

How can students incorporate the skills of an analytic exposition into their class or seminar papers?

That’s going to happen. No matter how much of a struggle the Core Course was, no matter how painful and ineffable were its torturous exercises, I would bet my holiday bonus (usually a bottle of wine) that it made every single MAPHer a better reader. It’s such a vital step in graduate school to realize that you have to read objectively, in fairness to the text—that you have to be able to give a clear account of a difficult text, that you have to confront a work based on what it argues before you bounce off of it into your own interests. Every MAPHer gets that now. We’re probably a step ahead of some first-year PhD students, who might not get it for a couple years yet.

Of course, you can also do it consciously. You can analyze a text you’re working on, ask what the author claims, what’s at stake, and how the grounds support the claim. That last question may be the most crucial one because it reveals an argument’s weaknesses and strengths. That’s where you can get in.

How do you recommend structuring the writing process?

This can be different for every writer… and for every paper. Structure it in the way that helps you write.

I will say this: if you think you have writer’s block, it might actually be lack of preparation. Or impatience with the preparation required.

Writing is like carpentry. We hammer nouns, screw verbs, saw off adjectives. But no carpenter goes to a vacant lot and waits for a house to appear.

And then claims—when a house doesn’t appear—to have carpenter’s block.

She needs the tools, the lumber, and a blueprint before she begins to build.

So have your notes, your quotes, and an outline before you begin to write.

Editing can be a brutal part of writing papers. How much time does it make sense to leave for editing? Any tips for proofreading or strategies for those larger, more structural edits?

Brutal?! Editing is the most fun! We discover insights we didn’t know we had, appareled in poetics of which we didn’t know we were capable.

Editing is where the real work happens. Drafting is messy process of moving thoughts from mind to paper, and it happens half consciously. When we revise, we discover so much we didn’t know was there: a nascent parallelism that we can perfect, an emergent theme that can be developed, a better argument than the one we thought we had!

Larger structural edits are difficult because so many subtle connections have been made in a text. It’s like trying to relocate part of a building. All kinds of wires and pipes and angles of rebar are holding it together. We discover the wiring has to be rewired, the plumbing has to be rerouted, the structure has to be repaired.

That’s why outlines are helpful—it’s easier to change a blueprint than to change a building. An outline can reveal the necessity of structural changes before the structure is built—and spare so many headaches.

For proofreading, I suggest proofreading in waves or what the Air Force calls sorties: read once for economy, once for clarity, once for information flow, once for argument. That will take some time, but it gives us a more objective view of our own work. Otherwise, if we just keep reading it to ourselves the same way, we’ll keep overlooking the same problems.

Editing is a blast! Embrace it. Leave time for it, as much as you can.

What is the top difficulty MAPH students face with their first round of finals?

Argument.

What is the biggest difference or difficulty for students as they transition from undergraduate to graduate papers?

Argument.

How do you recommend, or like to, celebrate the end of a paper?

This is a great question. I write five stories per month for Forbes. At the end of each one, there’s a feeling of satisfaction, an endorphin rush, an inner celebration, that lasts about half an hour before I start thinking about my next story. At the end of the month, when I’ve completed five, the celebration might last a few hours before I start thinking about next month. MAPHers, too, always have something to do next. Celebration time is brief—at least until June.

For the brief celebrations, go outside. Even if it’s hostile outside, it can be so restorative to one’s body and mind to remember that nature exists, that its mechanisms are more vast and powerful than the relatively petty concerns of our constructed world, and that it goes on, regardless of what we do or we write—nature goes on, within us and without us.

(Exercise is good too. Be in your body. Which is another way of being in nature.)

Winter is here. Ned Stark warned us and now that it has arrived, we must face the cold, cold truth.

Although the Chicago winter is tough, it doesn’t have to be entirely horrible. Below I have compiled Maph Central’s V.I.I. (Very Important Items) for the winter as well as some more general tips for the cold weather. Chicagoans, feel free to post additional advice in the comments!

We will all become The Winter Soldier

Very Important Items:

Sarah: Scarves! “In Chicago it’s not the actual temperature that gets you, but the wind-chill. A scarf makes all the difference.”

Wool Insoles: A cheap and quick way to make your boots warmer is to cut out a piece of wool the shape of your insoles and then stick it in the boot. (You can find a DIY tutorials, though it is pretty self-explanatory.)

Waterproof your shoes and boots. Buying a waterproofing spray is a great investment for the next 6 months.

Layers. Just layer it on up. Especially when you are moving around campus, layers are the way to go. Temperatures will change as you move from classroom to library to the frigid outdoors. You should look like this kid from A Christmas Story.

Lentil Soup. Any soup is a great choice. But my wallet and I are especially fans of lentil soup, which is warm, incredibly cheap, and it lasts for many leftovers. This is a great meal for winter, when you just want something warm and easy.

Sun Substitutes. We usually get Vitamin D from sunlight, but this becomes harder to do in the winter. Consider taking a supplement or investing in a sunlamp. Many of my MAPH friends last year had one and would swear by it. This is a good way to keep your mood up and remember that there is light- metaphorical and literal- at the end of the tunnel.

Another great mood boost? Hot Chocolate. Add some Nutella, some peppermint schnapps, maybe some cinnamon. Whatever you think best accompanies those mini marshmallows.

Find a way to exercise. Some of you may brave the cold and go for a run (how? why? I may never fully understand), but don’t forget that you have access to the Ratner Gym, its pool, etc. Even going over to the Core Power or working out at home are all good ways to keep up your mood and take a break from the books.

A great trick I discovered last winter was actually my ceiling fan. If you turn on your ceiling fan, it will push the hot air (which rises) back down to you, effectively warming up the apartment/room.

I recommended this idea way back in July, but I think plants are the best. It can be so nice to have a bit of green in your home, to remind you that life goes on and that this color will exist again! Consider a hearty plant that will require minimal upkeep, like a fern or mint. Or, as evidenced by their presence in the lounge, aloe vera and succulents are also pretty unkillable.

You may be solely focused on completing your finals right now. That is fine and, in that case, feel free to return to this post in the future.

However, if you are also starting to think about the thesis, read on!

Late November feels like a weird time, or at least it did for me last year. Mostly because we’re encouraged to think about the thesis, but without taking any action. Meaning, I was told to think about potential advisors, but not to approach them. Or to think about my object, but not to write about it yet. All of this felt somewhat confusing and frustrating… but it was all excellent advice.

Don’t be afraid to linger in that thought-work.

But don’t feel like there is nothing you can do. Although I encourage you to take the thesis one step at a time (aka, focus on fall finals before jumping into thesis mode), below is some advice about what you can do to prepare in the next few weeks.

Look through faculty pages and come up with a list of 5 faculty members:

This is a great way to continue exploring UChicago’s faculty and to get a larger sense of who is at the University. Additionally, this will provide a sense of what is currently being worked here. For now it is better to look through the website, rather than approaching a professor.

*There’s no harm in talking to a current professor or seeking advice, but since your thesis topic and proposal aren’t final (and won’t be for weeks), it won’t be productive to ask someone to advise your project. As it was explained to me last year, it’s like asking someone to prom before the homecoming dance.

Create Reading Lists:

Before you embark on Winter Break, you’ll have to turn in an annotated bibliography to your preceptor. In the next few weeks, and over Winter break, creating reading lists is a great place to start. Though, especially over Winter Break, don’t feel too beholden to that bibliography. Keep researching and tracking new sources!

It may even be helpful to create different lists around different aspects or concepts you are interested in including. A quick way to develop a list is to pull from the index or citations of a recent book or article on your subject.

Become familiar with EndNote or Zotero:

I discovered Zotero last December and it changed my life. This is an incredible tool to help with citation and to keep track of which reading said what or which quote came from where. The library has workshops on using these, which I also recommend. You can take your laptop to the library and they will install it, walk through all of the steps, etc. As you know from the bibliography sessions, the librarians are beyond helpful!

Come talk to the Mentors:

Our shirts are ordered and on their way

We have the thesis experience still fresh in our minds and are happy to talk about our experiences- what we did that worked, that didn’t worked, etc. We have not only our own experiences to pull from, but those of all our MAPH peers from last year.

And we are here for questions, too if you are thinking about changing topics, want to discuss potential advisors, or just vent about thesis anxieties.

Upcoming Thesis Events:

Next Tuesday (12/2) in the Core lecture, there will be a thesis panel with Hilary, David, and the preceptors to answer questions and tell you more about what’s to come. You should all attend, no matter what you are or aren’t thinking about the thesis.

That Thursday (12/4), there will be an information session for the creative thesis option. The session will be at noon in the MAPH Lounge. Even if you are unsure or just considering the creative option, you should come and check it out!

When you return from Winter Break, Matt and I will also have an informal, bagel-fueled panel or conversation about the thesis process.

]]>https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/2014/11/24/the-thesis-fall-edition/feed/0Eat, Sleep, Read: Part III (Managing Reading and Workload)https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/2014/11/17/eat-sleep-read-part-iii-managing-reading-and-workload/
https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/2014/11/17/eat-sleep-read-part-iii-managing-reading-and-workload/#commentsMon, 17 Nov 2014 15:00:56 +0000http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/?p=5126Eat, Sleep, Read is a three-part series on wellness in grad school. MAPH is a challenging year in a lot of ways, but you can make it way easier physically, mentally, and emotionally by taking care of yourself and managing your workload. For Part III, we’ll cover some academic tips that might help you manage your workload and deal with school-related stressors.

Obviously, one of the biggest stressors in grad school is the workload. In fact, it’s probably the biggest stressor. Getting enough sleep, exercising regularly, eating well—all these important aspects of wellness become difficult to maintain because there’s constantly so much to get done. So we’ve come to the last (and perhaps most important) post of this wellness series: how to manage your academic workload and find some balance in grad school!

Know your personal challenges. Know your resources.

It’s useful to take a little time to reflect on your own academic habits—this is the first step to figuring out the best way to use all the sundry resources UChicago makes available to you as a grad student. Do you always have trouble with procrastination? Check out ASAP’s time management resources. Know you always get stuck while drafting long papers? Plan ahead and schedule a consultation with the writing program.

Here’s a quick survey of some of the best resources available to you as a MAPHer:

Jeff McMahon: If you haven’t yet visited this delightful, calming, brilliant human being, definitely do so. You can sign up for his office hours on Chalk—Jeff is great for brainstorming papers, serving as a sounding board for arguments, and bringing clarity/structure to your whole thought process about writing.

ASAP (Academic Skills Assessment Program): Run by Student Counseling Services, this service helps with a variety of problems we encounter in our academic lives. Procrastinate too much? Have writer’s block? Want to learn speed reading? ASAP has workshops for all of these, and you can also schedule individual consultation sessions where counselors will point you to a host of other resources depending on your needs.

Writing Program: Our friends over at the Writing Program have implemented a whole host of new offerings for grad students this year—check out the offerings here. Most impressive is a new initiative called Graduate Writing Consultations. Sign up for one of these sessions, and you can send in up to ten pages of writing (from a final paper, thesis draft, etc.) and then meet with a trained Graduate Writing Consultant to workshop your draft materials. This is an incredible service, and I’m super jealous it wasn’t available last year—make good use of it!

The craziest thought you can have in grad school is that you have to read everything; disabuse yourself of that notion right now.

Don’t let the advisor “super-duper-ego” get to you.

Oftentimes, grad students complain that the amount of reading/work that they are assigned is impossible. Guess what? It is. When you are in a scenario where an impossible demand has been placed on you, there are two options as I see it: 1) get irrationally upset at yourself for being unable to meet said impossible demand or 2) rationally acknowledge the impossibility of the demand, and thus free yourself to work within your own abilities.

Might I recommend the latter? The worst thing you can do is let yourself get frustrated with too much reading/writing—when you’re inundated, there’s only one option: triage your work and simply do what you can! Pick the most important things you can do on that day, and get them done. Finish the thesis pages you have due the next day, and let yourself skip (or simply skim) the third article you were going to read for that seminar. Do all that you can, and don’t let the irrational demands of academia induce work-guilt. You can only do what you can do—so just do that, and forget the rest!

Instrumentalize reading.

The average weekly reading for a grad student.

We’re people who like reading for reading’s sake, but in grad school you have to read with a purpose. Can I come up with two or three points to make about this article in class tomorrow? Should I read this whole thing because it’s immediately relevant to my thesis?

The best advice I got in college: be able to summarize every article you read in a single sentence. That’s having read it. Read in order to do that. This frees you from scrutinizing over every word, every paragraph, every page in a way that feels interminable.

This instrumentalization can take different forms, of course. Are you reading something to use it in your thesis? Then read as much as is relevant to your thesis, and stop there. The point here is that to make reading an instrumental, end-oriented activity. Decide what you want to get out of reading this article, or that book—then simply read for that purpose!

DON’T read.

Watch some TV. Go to the gym. Walk by the lake. Go on a date. Catch up on laundry. Bake something. Then eat it. See a movie. Visit the North side. Go to a concert. Grab a drink at Jimmy’s. Grab a drink anywhere but Jimmy’s. Call your mom. Read (but for pleasure!).

Sometimes the best way to be productive is to allow yourself to be unproductive for a stretch of time. Take a Saturday to go do something fun. When you return to your work the next day, your eyes will be fresher. Remember: becoming a grad student does not mean you stop being a person!

]]>https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/2014/11/17/eat-sleep-read-part-iii-managing-reading-and-workload/feed/0Eat, Sleep, Read: Part II (On Sleep)https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/2014/11/13/eat-sleep-read-part-ii-on-sleep/
https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/2014/11/13/eat-sleep-read-part-ii-on-sleep/#commentsThu, 13 Nov 2014 15:00:06 +0000http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/maph/?p=5113Eat, Sleep, Read is a three-part series on wellness in grad school. MAPH is a challenging year in a lot of ways, but you can make it way easier physically, mentally, and emotionally by taking care of yourself and managing your workload. For Part II, we’ll cover some tips that may help you get better, more restful sleep during your time in MAPH.

“Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more!” – Grad Students (or Shakespeare, I guess)

Sleep and grad school don’t always mix well. Between classes, writing, reading, and other demands, there aren’t enough hours in the day, and it will inevitably seem like there aren’t enough hours to get a full night’s sleep. But keeping a regular, healthy sleep schedule in grad school will make you so, so much happier. As someone who pulled all-nighters all through undergrad, I can attest that the best life change I implemented during my MAPH year was committing to being better about sleep (I only pulled one all-nighter during MAPH, by accident—long story). Below find some tips that might help you get more restful sleep on a more regular basis!

This advice is all well and good, but it can be remarkably tough to stick to it in grad school, when schedules can be erratic and your laptop is always by your side. There will inevitably be times when you have to stay on the computer late to finish some writing or clear your inbox. Do you best to try to implement as many of these sleep hygiene tips as you can—an earlier dinner can help, and you can easily implement a simple bedtime routine. Also, I’ve taken to using this app f.lux on my laptop, which helps counteract the negative effects of staring at a bright screen right before you try to sleep.

Be aware of your sleep cycles.

One of the best ways to sleep better is to understand what’s going on with your sleep—to reach real, restful REM sleep, you need to go through a 90-minute sleep cycle that gets you into that deep sleep state. Moreover, your body needs four to six of these cycles a night (i.e., minimum 6-7 hours of sleep, and ideally 8 or 9 hours).

Thanks to the magic of technology, you can now track your sleep cycles with this alarm clock app. I’ve been using it about a year now, and it’s super helpful for understanding and tracking sleep patterns—it lets you see how many sleep cycles you go through each night. If you ever have four or fewer, you can make sure to get extra time in the next night to make up the sleep debt!

Exercise trumps other sleep aids.
Having trouble falling asleep at night? There can be a number of factors that affect this, but getting some exercise earlier in the day can make a huge difference in helping you wind down at night. Moreover, studies have shown that aerobic exercise is the best kind for helping with insomnia—a quick jog in the afternoon, or a trip to the gym for a swim can do wonders at helping you get on a regular sleep schedule.

Exercise is generally the best sleep aid, but if you are dealing with some tough insomnia, use a natural sleep aid instead of Zzzquil or something like that—melatonin is naturally-occurring sleep hormone, and valerian tea is another great sleep aid.

Generally, though, it’s best to avoid these kinds of sleep aids—exercise and a regular schedule are the best way to ensure a normal, restful sleep schedule!

Above all else, keep a regular schedule.
The most important pillar of good sleep is a regular schedule. This can also be the toughest, given the irregularity of a grad student’s schedule. It’s often tempting to stay up an hour or two later to finish some reading or write another page. But it’s important to prioritize sleep in that scenario!

I started doing this in winter quarter last year, and it helped my sleep enormously. When 11pm rolled around, I put down my reading no matter what—and, miraculously, I found I was able to get up earlier the next day to finish any work I had missed. The point here being: you’re going to sleep regardless—what’s important is setting a consistent time and sticking to it!